Cells and tissue in the body are proliferated, differentiated, and developed through interaction of very complex 3-dimensional structures. However, most of cell culturing is performed on an impermeable and flat 2-dimensional plane. Therefore, 2-dimensional cell culturing has a limitation in properly mimicking in vivo cellular environment.
Recently, culturing of a spheroid, which is a 3-dimensional cell group and equivalently functions as in vivo, receives attention. Since cell aggregation is induced to mimic a cancer and a method of grafting aggregated cells is used in transplantation of islet cells in order to induce normal secretion of insulin for treatment of diabetes, mass production of a spheroid is required. Further, in accordance with development of stem cell research, various methods are attempted to culture embryonic stem cells in 3-dimension and apply the resultant to the study about various differentiation mechanisms.
Examples of typical 3-dimensional cell culturing methods include a hanging-drop method, a rotary culture method, a centrifuge method, a micromolding method and so forth. For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent No. 6-327465 discloses a method of seeding a plurality of single cells in a well having a cone shape bottom and culturing a spheroid by aggregating and dividing the single cell on the bottom, and Korean Registered Patent No. 10-1341572 discloses a culturing method using a 3-dimensional cell culturing device including: a plate part; and a plurality of cell receiving parts which are extended from one end of the plate part and include a hollow-type tube.
It has been expected that these 3-dimensional cell culturing method is used in various fields of industry such as regeneration medicine, hybrid artificial organs, production of biobeneficial materials, research⋅investigation of tissue or organ of organisms, screening of new drugs, an alternative method of animal testing to evaluate influence of an endocrine disruptor, a cell chip having a function as a sensor and so forth.
However, these typical 3-dimensional cell culturing methods are problematic in that: a separate culturing tool is required; the culturing method is complicate; and also required time is long.